Hell, with full synthetic I would be doing 12 months during whatever is the coolest month to avoid your panties getting all sweaty.
OCI Guidance
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Hell, with full synthetic I would be doing 12 months during whatever is the coolest month to avoid your panties getting all sweaty.
Agreed! Bicycling on roads owned by cars is unwise.
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To the OP, yes, we read your initial post and also your pointed rejoinder to some of the other replies. Remember that this a popular forum, hundreds of people will read this, 600+ views on this thread already. I would politely posit to you that there may be many more people likely in a similar situation as you who may find it helpful. I guess that sometimes the replies may not be solely be directed to your case only, but it might benefit someone else. I know that I have benefited greatly over the years from these discussions. If you don't like a reply then ignore it and if you like a reply then feel free to appreciate it. No need to be snarky, it just puts off people from replying. The poster @Bailes1992 was probably referring to himself, but he is from the UK, where the culture of walking is a lot more prevalent than here.
Just my humble 2c.
you could walk if you lived by me.. might not like your kids interacting with meth-heads/other hard drug addicts at 7am though.Peak laziness right there! Half a mile? Twice a day? In a car? Why would you do this?
The school my children attend is around half a mile away, it takes us 8 minutes to walk in the morning. I wouldn't dream of taking the car.
usually they leave you alone but if they all sweaty and taking their clothes off while screaming, call the police and ready the pepper spray.IMO.
4-7am is the worst.. after that they usually steal breakfast somewhere(example grocery store donuts eat in the RR) then go take a nap.
#1 reason I drive to work instead of walking....
#2 My house is 3 blocks from large subsidized housing area.
Well, it sort of does. Because if that fuel burn occurs in an always warm engine, it’s getting MUCH better MPG than if it was in an engine getting nothing but cold starts. Oxidation is time @ temperature and the correlation of total oxidation to fuel burn is pretty good, according to the person who gave me the rule of thumb. He was the lab director at SWRI and I’d take his word as gospel when it came to oil analysis.
UOA
I did just recently. Well, close to it. My 4500 mile OCI UOA represented about 155 gallons of fuel burn at the 29.0 mpg average for the entire OCI. My accord takes 5 quarts and 155 gallons of burn is only a ratio of about 124x pan capacity.
The wear numbers were excellent, but viscosity was marginal due to fuel dilution. Oxidation had room to go farther.
The burn ratio with this car is probably going to end up just under 150 with the dilution.
Smart, even though you might be well under 2,000 miles. Fact is this is a very punishing usage pattern.
Had an old friend who changed his oil when it turned black. That would be way too soon for me but if you are worried about fluid dilution etc, it’s a starting point. Having said that, I noticed that some car makers recommend once per year in low usage situations but I believe this to be more about marking a calendar date more than anything. Change it once per year or when it turns black, whichever comes first. 
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I know my commute was ideal and probably the easiest miles ever put on a car and the new jaunt is almost worst case scenario. I noticed that it doesn’t take the truck very long to heat up and I’ve been experimenting a bit. If I alter my route slightly I can achieve 5 miles from my house to work and oil temp will be around 206°. I may toss a different route either to or from every couple days in addition to a highway run every other weekend or so.
I’ve been keeping an eye on it since I’ve started working this job with this commute. I checked it day before yesterday and it’s not dark in the least, and doesn’t smell like fuel. I actually tasted it day before yesterday (it’s not a habit) and it doesn’t taste like fuel either, there isn’t a milky sludge under the oil cap either. I am half tempted to run it the full year and do a used oil analysis just to see, it will be a full year the oil is in there in just a few months anyway.Had an old friend who changed his oil when it turned black. That would be way too soon for me but if you are worried about fluid dilution etc, it’s a starting point. Having said that, I noticed that some car makers recommend once per year in low usage situations but I believe this to be more about marking a calendar date more than anything. Change it once per year or when it turns black, whichever comes first.
The owners manual actually addresses short trips specifically and says to follow the OLM or 1 year. Currently the OLM says 52%. This fill went in in February. I do have a Wix XP filter on it which I continued to use due to carried over trust from their glory days until I started back reading here and learning that their quality fell off. I am kind of anxious to get that off of there, but it seems to still be doing the job. I have a Carquest ready to go on.
There’s an alternative you might consider.
You might be skeptical, but allow me to explain why a really thick oil (Mobil 1 15w-50?) might be worth considering.
First, you location means there’s no such thing as a start too cold for a 15w or 20w. Using DeRidder as a proxy for your location (my brother just moved away from there), there’s only an 8% chance of a morning temperature falling below 35F, and only 1% chance of being 25F-30F or less.
Because of your exceedingly mild winters, any 15w or even 20w oil has sufficient cold flow to get oil pressure in < 3 seconds. Which means cold start wear due to pressure delay is not much of a factor with any synthetic oil at all. What matters more is the strength of the residual film while it’s cranking. This is where being a thick oil comes in. This is also where certain formulations with MoDTC and esters will have advantages. (HPL basic PCMO gets a big edge here).
By my lights, HPL 20w50 PCMO is the “best” you can do. The esters and moly plus beastly tough residual film all but guarantee almost no startup wear. The high viscosity helps with ring seal when the engine is cold and not sealing as well as it otherwise might. The super high viscosity also gives you a lot of margin against dilution of both fuel and moisture.
Finally, the super high TBN of this HPL oil gives you a lot of room to handle the contaminants that will spike higher in your usage.
HPL PCMO 20w-50. Run it a year and grab a sample, then you’ll feel comfortable running it at least another year.
You might be skeptical, but allow me to explain why a really thick oil (Mobil 1 15w-50?) might be worth considering.
First, you location means there’s no such thing as a start too cold for a 15w or 20w. Using DeRidder as a proxy for your location (my brother just moved away from there), there’s only an 8% chance of a morning temperature falling below 35F, and only 1% chance of being 25F-30F or less.
Because of your exceedingly mild winters, any 15w or even 20w oil has sufficient cold flow to get oil pressure in < 3 seconds. Which means cold start wear due to pressure delay is not much of a factor with any synthetic oil at all. What matters more is the strength of the residual film while it’s cranking. This is where being a thick oil comes in. This is also where certain formulations with MoDTC and esters will have advantages. (HPL basic PCMO gets a big edge here).
By my lights, HPL 20w50 PCMO is the “best” you can do. The esters and moly plus beastly tough residual film all but guarantee almost no startup wear. The high viscosity helps with ring seal when the engine is cold and not sealing as well as it otherwise might. The super high viscosity also gives you a lot of margin against dilution of both fuel and moisture.
Finally, the super high TBN of this HPL oil gives you a lot of room to handle the contaminants that will spike higher in your usage.
HPL PCMO 20w-50. Run it a year and grab a sample, then you’ll feel comfortable running it at least another year.
I am in Houma, so a bit warmer than DeRidder if anything lol. My only concern with running an oil that thick is the MDS system on this truck. I’d need to really research how oil that thick may affect it. I already run a slightly thicker oil than Ram wants because I can’t wrap my mind around a 0w20 or 5w20 being a good thing, but haven’t considered anything that thick.
Changing the oil isn’t a big deal in itself as I have a Fumoto valve, the oil filter is the problem on this truck, a bit of a pain but not too prohibitive.
I think Hohn gave you great advice. Anywhere else, everyone is going to tell you it'll blow up your engine. I'd take it. I'm going to do something similar with a 40 weight. I short trip too, but not quite a half a mile!
I had a similar situation. My commute went from 27 miles each way to 3 miles each way. I found a roundabout way to work that added 2 miles and 3 minutes and got about 3 miles of 60 mph highway. Because I come home for lunch, my commute went from 12 mi of surface streets per day to 20 mi per day AND I got 12 highway miles added to it. Do you have a similar longer way you can drive to work? Adding the highway miles seemed to make the biggest impact to my commute. Plus I take a highway drive every weekend. That gets me to about 4000 mi OCI every 6-7 months.
There are different routes I can take that’ll extend to 5-8 miles. That’s enough to get oil over 200°. Thinking of doing that a couple times a week just to change things up a bit. Will still do highway run every couple weekends as I have been.
The half mile is the most direct route, I literally work at the back of my street, so other routes make a big loop but will achieve a desired result.
I personally found a spreadsheet helped me to stay on pace for an OCI that I wanted. For me, it's 4000 miles. This tells me how long it will take me to get there, and lets me decide to take an extra drive, or go a longer way to help speed things along. The bold on row 252 indicates an oil change. Since I'd rather not change the oil in the cold winter or humid summer, I can adjust my driving habits to help me reach my goal at the desired time.
Probably not a useful reply, but driving longer/further just to warm up the oil a bit more seems kinda crazy to me. I know you have an OLM system, but does the owner’s manual have some kind of extreme/severe use guideline? Just looked it up, looks like 4K miles or 350 hours of run time, seems like that would be reasonable? Or just use “good enough” oil/filter and change at whatever interval makes sense to you? Seems like false economy driving significantly more (time and gas) rather than just changing the oil, I think somebody already said that though 
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